Coffee banned for 13 years! Turkey’s strange relationship with the drink
The ‘kahvehanes’ or coffeehouses of Istanbul are part of a 500-year-old culture but their history has been controversial.
In 2013 Turkish coffee was added to UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, recognizing that coffee culture is a key part of life in the nation.
It plays a major role in wedding rituals, celebrations and day-to-day society, helping people to form bonds over an ancient tradition. Turkish coffeehouses or ‘kahvehanes’ have been around for about 500 years but they were once outlawed for more than a decade, all because of their power to connect people.
Coffee’s roots in the region go back a long way, with coffee-making paraphernalia found in Turkey, Egypt and Persia that dates back to the year 1350. In the 15th century, Sufi mystics in modern-day Yemen consumed coffee to stay awake through long nights of prayer and it spread throughout the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century.
But the early growth of coffeehouses in Turkey was fiercely opposed, with officials seeing them as breeding grounds for subversive activities. In fact, in 1511 Mecca’s governor, Hayır Bey, banned coffee in the city due to concerns about the culture that it was spreading.
That ban lasted for 13 years but the love of coffee remained and by the 1550s coffeehouses were commonplace once again. The culture continued to grow and it remains a key part of Turkish society.
And while coffee is now an everyday drink throughout the world, the Turkish version is a far-cry from what you might be served at Starbucks. Purists in Turkey still use the Ottoman cezve-ibrik method - also popular in Greece and rooted in Ethiopia - which has become the hallmark of traditional Turkish coffee.
What emerges from this time-consuming and methodical process is a drink that is strong and bitter, with all the flavor extracted from the finely ground coffee beans. The final product is unfiltered, meaning that remaining coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup can be used for sooth-seeing rituals.
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